Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research (IC&SR) , IIT Madras

Lab Scale Economic Hydraulic Fracture Studies of Reservoirs with an emphasis on pore fracture geometry studies by developing fracture porppants and microseismic estimations.

Funding Agency Details

Oil India Limited

Department

Mechanical Engineering​

Description

The paradigm shift from the conventional resources to the unconventional resources is the consequence of a global increase in energy utilization. Conventional resources can be defined as those formations where the recovery of hydrocarbons is possible without any specialized method. Unconventional resources can be defined as those formations in which hydrocarbon recovery is not economically possible without the implementation of specialized stimulation treatments such as matrix acidizing or fracturing. Therefore, the recovery of hydrocarbons from the unconventional resources in an attractive economic proportion requires state-of-the-art well stimulation and completion technologies. Unconventional resources such as the tight sands are examples of formations that needs stimulation for economical production. Stimulation techniques include hydraulic fracturing, foam fracturing, explosive shooting, and more recently the pulse fracturing. Pulse fracturing is a relatively new stimulation technique in which a controlled dynamic release of fluid energy pressurizes a wellbore to initiate multiple fractures and extend them by fracture pressurization. Pulse fracturing can be achieved by many ways such as explosive shooting, thermochemical fluids, dynamic loading and or by high energized gas

Problem Statement

Developing new innovative technologies to overcome operational and technical challenges involved in horizontal wells multistage fracturing, the alternative way to increase SRV is by creating multiple radial fractures by performing pulse fracturing. Pulse fracturing is a relatively new technique, can serve as an alternative to conventional hydraulic fracturing in many cases such as to stimulate naturally fractured reservoirs to connect with pre-existing fractures, to stimulate heavy oil with cold heavy oil production technique, to remove condensate banking nearby wellbore region, and when to avoid formation damage near the vicinity of the wellbore originated due to perforation.

Outcome of the Research

Developed a new device for Pulse Fracking at IITM
Analyzed the fracture pattern on real core samples
This novel fracturing technique is based on tailored pulsed fracturing. Multiple radial fractures can create using this technique. This technique usually applied to increase the SRV. The ease of this approach makes it very attractive to implement. This technique can be served as an alternative to conventional hydraulic fracturing and in many cases this technique is more attractive than conventional hydraulic fracturing. The applicability of this technique has been demonstrated through several laboratory and field trial studies in this project 

Principal Investigator

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